Considering it serves as a video-game tie-in (and, narratively, a prequel) to J.J. Abrams’s upcoming film Star Trek: Into Darkness, which lands in theaters on May 17, 2013, we had already conceived a pretty narrow window for the release of Star Trek — the adventuring third-person shooter from publishers Namco Bandai and Paramount Digital Entertainment. Today the date was made official.

Namco Bandai and Paramount have announced that Star Trek will be hitting shelves on April 23, 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The later two platforms, additionally, will be offering the game as a digital download.

To coincide with the confirmation, the publishers also unveiled the official Star Trek box art (shown further below) as well as the list of pre-order perks included in the “Elite Officer Pack,” which can be reserved at any retailer beginning tomorrow:

We were able to get solid feel for Star Trek’s gameplay during our co-op demo preview at E3 2012, and the extra gear being offered might just come in handy as Kirk and Spock confront the Gorn — the game’s rapacious, resource-ravaging reptilian foes. It’s unclear just how extensive any of the shooter’s progression or equipment elements may be — how, for instance, might the Academy Phaser differentiate from the Kelvin Hand Phaser (aside from the color)? — but a wide array of loadout options would certainly add depth to any team-based, cooperative mission structure.

As for the box art, it definitely eschews the scorched-Earth, Dark Knight Rises/Inception motifs of the Into Darkness poster for a bolder, heavy-on-sci-fi-action aesthetic. But it’s a necessary distinction. Star Trek may well be a movie tie-in — complete with Paramount logos and reprised roles from film stars Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Zachary Pinto (Mr. Spock), Zoe Saldana (Lieutenant Uhura), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Karl Urban (Dr. “Bones” McCoy), John Cho (Sulu) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) — but developer Digital Extremes’s central focus is on the dynamic between Kirk and Spock. Our demo even picked up on several witty dialogue exchanges between the two, and the potential certainly exists for a game that’s as big on character and drama as it appears to be on grandiose set-piece action.

Do you think Star Trek, the game, will achieve the same success as its contemporary film-series counterpart?

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Star Trekreleases on April 23, 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.